Diane of Lavender Dreams too lost her blog.

EDIT: Diane got her blog back! You can read it here.

I have a blog land friend Diane, a sweet lady who recently sent me sea glass from Cape Canaveral.

She had her blog for ten years and all of a sudden her blog was removed by blogger for unknown reasons.
Those of you who used to read her blog you can find her now at Lavenderdreamsnew.
Her new address is https://lavenderdreamsnew.blogspot.com
Imagine losing a blog you have been carefully and beautifully writing for ten years.
So back up your blog just in case not to lose all those photos and comments etc.
For those of us who blog just to keep a record of our daily lives and keep contact with our friends in blogland Diane's story is devastating.
The rest is what Diane and her husband wrote in her new blog about the situation.

The Behemoth squashes the little Lavender Dreamer

That's right. "The Rise of the Machines" is upon us. Our former happy little blog (lavenderdreamstoo.blogspot.com) was suddenly terminated.

Why and how was it done? It wasn't someone reporting us. It was Google's automated piece of software (a bot) that roams the Blogger world looking for pre-programmed words of woe. Once it detects something it kills the whole blog without warning. Without any notification about these supposed offending words. Without an opportunity to fix anything. Just ZAP ... your digital life is deleted. Everything is gone!

Ten years of blogging, thousands of posts, many thousands of photos, over ten thousand comments and a hundred thousand heart-felt words all gone in an instant. Devastating! Be warned all you innocents in blogland.

The blog was actually removed twice, for "phishing". Which, as you all know, is absurd. We have never asked for your personal, private information. The Appeals process reinstated the blog the first time then the Google Bot zapped us again the next day. But the second time we were locked out of the Appeals process. We tried sending Feedback. Never got a answer. Tried to post to the Blogger Help Community. They never published the post. Located twenty phone numbers for Google. The numbers are all automated and only a couple allowed you to leave a message. We left messages. Never got a callback.

Google/Blogger pronounces you guilty using an "automated system" (their words) and gives you little or no opportunity to prove otherwise. It's been a nightmare. (for more details see the timeline post below)

So what choice do we have now that Google/Blogger has burned down our blog? Like the Phoenix from Greek mythology we shall rise from the ashes with this new blog. We will start over and hope that our many friends and followers will be able to find us and that they will never ever have to suffer the same fate.

Mr. Lavender D.

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You can imagine how devastating this has been to me. I appreciate my sweet hubby taking the time to help me start a new blog. But can I ask all of you to do me a favor? Will you please put a sentence or two in your next post to let people know where I am and what has happened to me? You can say that my blog was unfairly removed by Blogger and we are trying our best to get it back, but for now I will post updates on the process here:

lavenderdreamsnew.blogspot.com

And also a plea to Blogger to bring back lavenderdreamstoo. We're a supportive community! Maybe they will listen if we all voice our consternation together!

Thank you, Lavender Dreamer Diane

You have our permission to copy and paste any part or all of this post to your social media. At the very least please post a few lines on your own blog about what's happened to Lavender Dreams and include our new blog address. Thanks. MrLD